Sometimes LEGO builders drop off the map all of a sudden. Real life priorities take over or they lose interest. If the only way you followed the stuff that Ed Diment (Lego Monster) built was via flickr, you might think that the same at happened to him. To some extent it has. Ed’s real-life priority, however, is LEGO-related: he has become a professional LEGO builder, who, together with Duncan Titmarsh, runs a company called Bright Bricks. They also built the jet engine we blogged a while ago. Today, for the first time in a long while, Ed has posted one a new model on flickr.
It is a 1/55 scale model of an Airbus A-380 airliner, commissioned by a toy shop in Heathrow Airport. I already saw pictures of this a few weeks ago, whilst visiting the Bright Bricks workshop, and have been eagerly anticipating blogging them ever since. I know from Ed that being a professional LEGO builder means often spending time building things that aren’t necessarily all that interesting as well as dealing with a lot of red tape, such as health and safety rules and planning permissions. Ed is an airplane buff, however. Back when his LEGO-building was just a hobby, he built a model of Concorde, for instance. It is no surprise then, that the Airbus was one model that he himself was looking forward to building.
The real aircraft is a bit of a blimp, but the way the difficult compound curves on the fuselage were sculpted, the way the wing profiles and engines were built and the wonderful Brick-built British Airways markings on the tail make this model a thing of beauty.
Is everything on this model connected legitimately? I see some cheese slopes at the front on the bottom of the nose that don’t appear to have anywhere to connect? I was just wondering if this was in fact normal practice on these models and I was just in the dark.
The blending of the curved and pixelated sections is interesting. Building the logo into the tailfin, rather than using stickers or printing is also an elegant touch.
@Nathaneal
I took a closer look at some of the other pictures to see whether I can find what you mean, but everything looks legitimate to me. Check out this one, for instance.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/legomonster/10351000825/
For health and safety reasons the main fuselage has a metal beam in it and everything had to be glued, but knowing Ed and having built a similarly sized aircraft myself, it probably wouldn’t need that if it wasn’t going to be suspended from the ceiling of an airport terminal.
@Mnemonyx
I agree. It gives it a great look.
Yeah I just saw some white cheese slopes at the front particularly in the picture you have linked to. They are right at the front just left of the centre of the nose. I was like, how did he connect those? I have no problems with gluing and the metal for displaying. I bet it weighs heaps. All that aside though I should have said this first, this aeroplane looks absolutely fantastic!
^I imagined they were attacked to 45 degree slopes mounted upright. There’s room for that. However, looking at it again, I think you may be right in that they are probably glued in place. I suspect that if Ed were building this for himself, rather than for a customer on a budget with limited time, he would have made a different choice.